When professional artist Kim Abeles travels, she doesn’t come back with souvenirs and tchotchkes; she comes back with inspiration.

“I don’t think I’ve ever gone anywhere without making a piece of art,” said Abeles, while on a break from setting up her new show at the Torrance Art Museum. “Some people might write in a journal when they travel, but for me, I am much more inclined to make or create images.”

“Location Studies,” on display in the museum’s Main Gallery beginning Saturday, is the artistic product of Abeles’ extensive travels, both commissioned and personal.

The exhibit includes pieces born out of her experiences as a commissioned artist in places such as Vietnam, Thailand and the Czech Republic over the course of her 30-year career.

Using a combination of media – from photography and sculpture to fabric and metal – Abeles creates installation pieces that not only evoke the sights and sounds of each location, but also give the viewer an idea of the area’s space.

“My work is always about interpreting my world,” Abeles said. “I think very much in terms of the visual translation of places and spaces.”

In “36 Streets of Hanoi,” which is part of the Torrance show, Abeles translates a tour guidebook she picked up upon arriving in Vietnam into a visual representation of the vendors that inhabit the city streets.

“Each street is about the merchandise that had been sold there, like Fish Street or Onion Street. These were their actual names,” Abeles explained.

The result is a sizable installation, which combines Abeles’ painting of the streets of Vietnam with found objects from each area. A series of intertwined string identifies where each street can be found on the map.

Each piece is the culmination of hours upon hours of work. Abeles said she routinely locks herself in a room while she is creating, only venturing out to explore and research the place she is visiting.

“When I go on these trips I convert the hotel room into a studio,” she explained. “I won’t let anyone in to clean up and I rearrange the furniture, buckle down for a few weeks and work.”

What results are pieces that grow out of an artistic impulse brought to life through experience, not a preconceived idea.

“It has to have a natural evolution to it, it’s not as if I have a checklist,” said Abeles, in reference to how she decides what to create. “The best work always looks like it sort of landed to earth that way.”

Much of the resulting work deals with examining urban or developed areas and their relationship with nature. Abeles explores the ways society attempts to control nature, making it something that must be confined and experienced in a very restricted manner.

“Even when we teach babies, we give them access to nature in a very tidy way,” Abeles said. “We take them to the zoo. We don’t want them to get dirty, but we want them to be able to see a lion.”

Abeles hasn’t always worked with a variety of media. Originally from Missouri, she grew up in Pittsburgh and later trained as a painter while a student at Ohio University and the University of California, Irvine.

She gradually began experimenting with sculpture, metal and other media, which now make up her installation pieces.

“I have a strong craft background and published a craft book when I was 21 years old,” Abeles said. “It was natural for me to combine different fabrics and materials in my art.”

Inspired by the work of Gertrude Stein, Susan Sontag and Eva Hesse, Abeles has been able to do what thousands of art school graduates haven’t: make a living through art. A recipient of grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation, J. Paul Getty Trust and numerous private commissions, she said it all comes down to determination.

“I was always thinking slow and steady wins the race, but it’s not an easy route to take in a lot of ways – but I always want to feel like I am in unknown territory,” Abeles said. “If I am going to do this, I might as well do it on my terms.”

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